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| "...I was still close enough to the surface to stay above water just long enough for a single breath..." |
I was still worrying over how to escape the trolls who had captured me when the wagon jerked to a
crawl, and I heard a lot of voices saying something. I would have thought we
were making camp again, but we had been traveling only a few hours—and the
wagons didn't actually stop.
One of the trolls peeked out. "Garn!" He spat.
"It's the Patrol! They've spotted us!"
I heard a yell, "Cut the milk-horn loose!"
A terrific crash followed, coupled with a loud whinny, and
Jerak calling my name.
"Laura! Get out of there!"
But I couldn't move. I was still bound and gagged. My heart
skipped a beat as the wagon veered onto a dramatically different course and
began bumping over the plain instead of the road. I bounced so hard I was
almost upright a few times. At least the trolls with me could hold onto the
sides of the wagon and thus keep their seats.
I heard a rattling next to us, and Griggum's rumbling bass
voice.
"We're coming up on the Lake, fellas, and we need to
ditch the human."
I failed to see the relation between the two, but the trolls
understood. I faintly distinguished the rushing of a distant waterfall as one
troll hefted my shoulders and another grabbed my ankles. They carried me to the
back of the wagon, gripping me so tight that no amount of wriggling could
loosen their hold. Smoothly, they lifted me up and chucked me off to the side.
As I flew through the air over a glittering blue pool, I
could see at least one unicorn with a sapphire horn, and I heard a voice
announce, “Halt! It is I, Undaglen, Guardian of the Lake! I command you, come
forth!”
I hit the water and the sticky substance sealing my mouth dissolved
immediately—just in time for me to inhale the water I was currently sinking in.
I choked and spit, but I was still close enough to the
surface to stay above water just long enough for a single breath. The weight of
my still-bound limbs dragged me back under. I fought and writhed as much as I
could, but the rope didn’t budge. Looking at my legs, I couldn’t even see that
there was a knot in it. The rope circled my legs in one continuous circle. How
had the trolls tied it, then?
I was so focused on my legs that I nearly opened my mouth to
scream when something large bumped against my back. The added momentum sent me
sprawling headfirst toward some rocks—but my reflexes kicked in just in time
and I put out my arms to steady myself. Then I had to stare at both hands
before I realized what I had just done. Whatever bumped me had untied my arms!
I whirled in a circle to see if the thing was still around, and when I turned
back the direction I had been facing, I saw a creature easily twice my size
headed straight for me! I hastily waved my arms to try and swim away, but the
thing had long arms and it caught me around the legs—and when it let go, I was
free.
By now my lungs burned for breath. I could see the sunlight
streaming down from the surface, but every movement just made me sink lower. I
was losing strength; it was becoming harder to hold my mouth closed against the
water. I saw the creature come toward me again, this time from behind, and I
felt long limbs wrap around me like a blanket—a wet, fish-like blanket.
A webbed hand gripped my chin while the other smeared a leaf
across my face. The leaf left behind a snot-like jelly coating on my nose and
mouth. I twisted hard, and the arms finally released me as I shot away and
turned back to face my captor.
I saw, but I could not comprehend. The creature before me
was neither fish nor human, but a mix of both, and very tall (or long, as the
case may be), too fish-like to be described in human terms, and too human-like
to be dismissed as a mere fish. She had bulbous eyes, gills instead of a nose,
and a mouth constantly in motion. Violet hair was piled on top of her head,
bound and fastened by strands of seaweed and starfish. She maintained her
position by softly waving colorful fins spanning the space between her arms and
her sides. The legs were separate, but each ended in a long fin, like flippers.
I banked on the creature’s desire to rescue me as I waved my hands, trying to
signal that I wanted to be taken up closer to the surface.
The bulbous eyes watched me carefully, as the head tilted to
one side. The body was almost fluid in motion as she twisted around to get a
good look at me from all sides.
“I was under the impression that land-dwellers possessed the
ability to speak,” she said abruptly.
I stopped moving; she could talk—but how was she going to
know that I could, if the problem was being able to breathe underwater? I tried
bobbing my head and pointing to my mouth, humming to let her know that I had a
voice.
The creature blinked at me in what could only be construed
(owing to the lack of eyebrows and eyelids) as annoyance. She made a rattling
sound that could have been a sigh. “The uandino over your mouth enables you to
breathe, crawler. If you can talk, then talk!”
My mouth flew open on its own, and I felt a sudden heaving
rush of air enter my lungs—but no water. I stretched my lips as far as they
would go, but the gel over my mouth did not even crack. I could breathe
normally with the coating on my lips, just like she said.
My rescuer folded her arms and regarded me dubiously. “My
name is Shirill, and I am a maiden in the court of Her Ladyship the Mer-Queen,
whom land-dwellers know as the Lady of the Lake. Who are you and how did you
come to be bound and cast into the Lake?”
A small thrill ran through me; so this is what mermaids
looked like in this world!
“My name is Laura,” I said, “I’m a human, and I came to this
world by mistake. I was captured by some trolls, who tied me up, and they
tossed me into the Lake when the Patrol spotted them.”
Shirill gasped so hard that I could hear her gills flap
closed. “A human? It has been many ages since a human has been in our midst—and
the last one certainly didn’t have any business with the Lake.” She swam in a
slow loop, her body forming a wide, graceful circle. “You say you are here by
mistake—but perhaps you are here to unite the Phantasmians and free us from the
Underworld oppression!”
This was the third time someone assumed I was here to “save
the world.” First of all, that sort of a plot was so overdone I didn’t want any
part of it myself; secondly, my whole goal was only to get out of this world by
any means possible! I shook my head.
“I seriously doubt it,” I said. “I am not here to start a
rebellion or anything like that; the unicorn I was traveling with seemed to
think that this Lady of the Lake whom you serve could help me figure out how to
get back to my own world. We were on our way there when the trolls waylaid us.”
Shirill was too attached to her idea to pay me any mind.
“Oh, but don’t you see? You, the human, are a stranger to every creature, and
so your abilities could be the key to sending the Underworlders back beneath
the surface, where they came from.”
“What abilities?” I objected.
Shirill swam around behind me, reclining in the water as if
on a bed. “The last human was the one to summon the Underworlders; do not all
humans have the same powers?”
The perfect plan for a fantasy story unfolded in my mind: a
wicked magician in search of ultimate power summoning an army of dark
creatures, and an innocent hero tasked with stopping him—
I shook my head and turned away from her. “Oh no you don’t!”
I said, both to myself and to the mermaid.
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